


Golden Boy

by lowbrw



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Dry as a bone, Haikyuu!! Chapter 402: Final Chapter: Challengers Spoilers, M/M, Mostly Gen, Pining, Post-Time Skip, Safe For Work, not a wick of moisture in this whole thing, think of it as a saltine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25890592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowbrw/pseuds/lowbrw
Summary: Nishinoya spots Asahi before Asahi spots Nishinoya. This makes sense to Asahi. Even in the nondescript bustle that is this airport baggage claim area, he finds himself sticking out, towering above people, resolutely in the way of old ladies pushing overstuffed suitcases.“Asahi!” he hears. He glances around him. Is that Nishinoya or a child? No, it’s definitely a child, being towed along by a grim-faced parent.“Behind you, Asahi,” comes Nishinoya’s voice again.“Oh! There you are.”________________________________________________________________________________________________________________AKA, Nishinoya visits Tokyo after his trip to Italy
Relationships: Azumane Asahi/Nishinoya Yuu
Comments: 13
Kudos: 54





	Golden Boy

Nishinoya spots Asahi before Asahi spots Nishinoya. This makes sense to Asahi. Even in the nondescript bustle that is this airport baggage claim area, he finds himself sticking out, towering above people, resolutely in the way of old ladies pushing overstuffed suitcases.

  
“Asahi!” he hears. He glances around him. Is that Nishinoya or a child? No, it’s definitely a child, being towed along by a grim-faced parent.

  
“Behind you, Asahi,” comes Nishinoya’s voice again.

  
“Oh! There you are.”

  
They pause for a moment to take each other in. Asahi feels a smile, unrehearsed, spread across his face. “Woah. Look at you, Nishinoya.” He’s tanned to the same color as the bleached lock of hair that hangs down over his forehead, making him monochromatically golden. He also looks brawnier than when Asahi last saw him, shockingly so. Asahi could never pack on that much muscle in two months. There must be something in the water in Italy.

  
Nishinoya laughs. “Hair!” he says, pointing to Asahi’s hair.

  
“Yeah, I’ve let it get long,” Asahi replies, suddenly a little self conscious.

  
“You look cool. Very city boy,” Nishinoya says. “Are we taking the subway?”

  
Asahi holds up his car keys. “No. You’re in luck.” He glances at Nishinoya’s suitcase. He would’ve been fine on the subway: it’s tiny. How did he live out of that for two months?

  
“A car in Tokyo?” Nishinoya’s eyebrows leap to the middle of his forehead. “Are you rich now?”

  
Asahi laughs, and it comes all the way up from his stomach. “No, no. I share it with my roommates.”

  
Nishinoya must be tired. On the walk to the parking area, he’s chatty, but not as chatty as Asahi was expecting. “Lots of beautiful women,” Nishinoya says at some point. Asahi smiles, of course Nishinoya would notice that. Is Nishinoya popular with women these days? In high school he was most certainly not. But now he radiates a sort of fearless charisma that women are probably drawn to. Nishinoya definitely wouldn’t have heard, “You’re so different from what I thought you would be like,” three dates in a row. Three dates that didn’t go badly, but did not progress forward either. It’s not just endemic to women either: Asahi had gone on his first date with another man recently, and he thought he would manage to scrape by without hearing it. But no, the man had waited till the end to pause and say, with a delicate professionalism, “Azumane, you’re not at all what I imagined.”

  
“Did you hear me?” Nishinoya asks.

  
“Hm?” He had been listening. It had been interesting, too: an anecdote about lobbing a shoe at a tree to get something else out of it.

  
“I said it would have been better with you there.” Though they managed to video chat fairly often, Asahi had forgotten that Nishinoya turns to face you when he speaks, fortifying his earnestness with full eye contact, nothing less.

  
“Oh. Really? I don’t know,” What a thought. Asahi in Italy. Spearing fish with his bare hands. Or, more likely, failing miserably to catch fish and scaring them out of Nishinoya’s vicinity. And then probably all the people on the ship would laugh and laugh at him and throw him overboard.

  
Nishinoya tugs on his bleached strip of hair, a toothy grin forming on his face. “Yeah. Only because you would’ve been tall enough to knock my shoe out of that tree. You would’ve shat your pants at all the other stuff, though.”

  
It’s a smooth drive to Asahi’s apartment. Nishinoya grumbles about the congestion, and Asahi assures him that it’s really not bad for the airport area. After a few beats of silence Nishinoya presses his cheek up against the glass to watch the lights blur past them, to look up at the shining skyscrapers.

  
“I’ve missed cities,” he tells Asahi. Nishinoya basks in the city lights, and Asahi watches him out of the corner of his eye, basking in his wonder.

  
They return to Asahi’s dark and empty apartment. “Don’t you have roommates?” Nishinoya asks, switching on the light in the kitchen.

  
Asahi explains that his roommates are acquaintances from college: one is an aspiring DJ, and the other is an aspiring poet. He doesn’t really see them, let alone know how they spend their days. But when he does see them, their conversations are painful. The poet likes to recite things at him early in the morning, and Asahi must muster every ounce of his acting ability to nod along enthusiastically. He also dreads when the DJ pokes his head out of his room and says, “Azumane-san, come here for a sec.” He inevitably finds himself locked in the DJ’s dark, slightly musty room for the next hour, listening to whatever raucous noise the DJ has created. He bobs along, trying his best to find a beat and stay on it, and racks his mind for positive slang words to assign to the music. The DJ and the poet are close with each other, bonded over their love of philosopher Nishida Yuji, but from the way they talk about him Asahi doubts that they’ve even read his books. As he’s talking, Asahi realizes that he’s missed telling stories to Nishinoya, who punctuates all the right beats with a loud laugh.

  
“That’s what you get for going to fashion school,” Nishinoya says. “Of course there’s weird pretentious types at fashion school.”

  
“Yeah, you’re right. But at least I get the apartment to myself a lot of the time.”

  
“It’s what you deserve after they put you through all that.” Nishinoya surveys the kitchen, and Asahi knows what he sees. A little small, a little on the dingy side, but not bad at all. “Do you mind if I take a shower? Then I’m going to show you all my vacation pictures. Then you’re hanging out with Suga and Daichi tonight, right?”

  
“Yeah! Go ahead! And yes! That’s the plan!” Asahi busies himself procuring a towel for Nishinoya. Nishinoya vanishes off to the bathroom, and Asahi sits down and checks his phone, ironing out a few details of meeting with Suga and Daichi. He warns them that they might get lost on the way to the bar they’re meeting at. Immediately, they gang up on him. “Oh, so Asahi’s a real Tokyo guy now, huh?” Daichi texts, and Suga deals the finishing blow with a laughing sticker. They’ll be in Tokyo for the next day, too. They’ve accumulated a list of things they’ve wanted to do in Tokyo, restaurants to try and museum exhibits to see, so they figured they could come up together and knock them all out on a weekend trip.

  
“Who are you texting?” Nishinoya says behind him. Asahi jumps, startled, fully feeling his butt lose contact with his chair. Nishinoya is absolutely silent on his feet. Asahi didn’t even hear the water turn off. It’s like he let a cat into his home. Or a ghost. One of those little child ghosts, the type to wear a blood stained white dress and have long black hair hanging down over its face. He looks closely at Nishinoya, who is towelling behind his ear. More a cat than a child ghost these days. In high school, Nishinoya’s head had been a little big for his body, making him look from certain, if not all, angles like someone’s kid brother. Either his head has shrunk or his shoulders have broadened to match it, because now he looks like what he is, a small and compact man.

  
“You know, men.” Asahi says. He starts sweating. Why did he say that? He’s texting Suga and Daichi. What does that even mean?

  
Nishinoya's brow furrows. “You date guys? And girls?”

  
Oh. How did this happen? He can see the way out ahead of him, it’s simple. _I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m texting Suga and Daichi about our plans tonight, Here, scour my phone for evidence._ But for some reason he pauses before taking it. Nishinoya’s open minded, right? This man went to Italy to duel swordfish. And yeah, it’s not disgust or even surprise on Nishinoya’s face right now, just focus.

  
“Yeah. It’s a pretty recent thing.”

  
“How do you feel?”

  
He wasn’t expecting that question. He hasn’t been asked about that before. Usually it’s about how his family feels, or how his friends feel, or how his dates feel. “Honestly? Good. I’m not going to tell my parents yet. They’re not super traditional people, but they wouldn't be thrilled. I’m going to give it some breathing room first.”

  
Nishinoya comes a pace or two closer to him, looking at him closely. Then Nishinoya’s face splits into a smile and he leans forward to give Asahi a loud and slightly painful high-five. He rides the momentum forward and bumps their foreheads together, again, loud and a little painful.

  
“What’s the, you know, romantic situation looking, you know, how is it for you?” Asahi asks, pressing his palm to his forehead.

  
Nishinoya freezes for a moment before responding. Freeze in every sense of the word: it doesn’t happen suddenly, and it wouldn’t be noticeable if Asahi hadn’t been watching him. He just sets in place, exactly like a liquid turning into a solid. “I honestly haven’t thought about it that much. I just like who I like.” He shrugs, a quick motion, as if he’s knocking away a touch. “So are you ready to see my vacation photos?”

  
Nishinoya pulls out his laptop, and Asahi begins the tedious task of rattling off his Wifi password. “I’ve missed Japanese WiFi,” Nishinoya remarks, face aglow in the computer light. “Can you throw me a few pillows? And turn out the lights?” Asahi, feeling for some reason buoyant, light on his feet, complies.

  
Nishinoya turns his computer around, and begins his presentation. He’s made a proper PowerPoint, embedding his pictures in the slides and everything. His trip began with an absolutely horrible flight that went from Tokyo to Seoul to Italy, which made absolutely no sense, and stretched an already long flight into an unreasonable one. In Seoul, he had the choice between a 2 hour layover or a 72 hour layover (Asahi shudders at this), and went for the longer one. But, as a result, the flight was dirt cheap.

  
Nishinoya clicks to the next slide. He has written _Day one in Seoul: worms. Day two in Seoul: Japanese war crimes_. Asahi feels his eyebrows draw together.

  
“So my first night in Seoul was really cool. I walked around so much and bought so much street food, and then in one place I got this little cup full of worms.”  
Worms? Worms? Nishinoya ate worms? Asahi in shock and awe. If he ate worms he’d be thinking about it for the rest of his life. But these things just bounce off of Nishinoya, don’t they, rain off a windshield. Things happen to him, and he barrels on unafraid towards the next experience. But life tends to stick to Asahi, settling around him, an insect in amber.

  
“Then the second day I got up really early and walked around the more quiet, greener parts of the city. I ended up in the War and Women's Human Rights museum. It had really colorful drawings on the outside. And inside were all these exhibits about the lives of comfort women.”

  
“Oh wow. Yeah.”

  
“That just wasn’t in our history textbooks, you know? These people were ripped from their homes, hurt really badly, and then just abandoned. There was this one story I can’t stop thinking about like how a woman was living in Japan for decades, and then when she heard Korean for the first time since she was young, she was suddenly reminded that there was a life outside of this.”

  
“Yeah. That’s absolutely horrible.”

  
“I called you that day, actually.”

  
“I remember.” It had been during work hours, but Asahi had huddled in the bathroom to take the call. Nishinoya had been in more of a listening than talking mood that day.

  
“Oh, really? I appreciated you picking up. I mean, it’s not about me, but it was heavy. Really heavy. It was nice to hear your voice.”

  
They sit with this for a moment. Day three in Seoul, Asahi learns, was mostly a mad dash around the airport. And that brings them to Italy.

  
Nishinoya shows him a picture of a gleaming ham. It’s a beautiful picture, because it’s a beautiful ham: a delicate pink, marbled with creamy white fat. He is told, cheerfully, that this was the first and last luxury food item Nishinoya had in Italy.

  
“Where did the money for ham even come from, Nishinoya?”

  
He has the decency to look a little bashful. “I don’t even know.” That’s Nishinoya. Golden boy. Things just fall into place for him. Asahi learns that in Italy he entered some fishing contests and won enough money to buy him plane tickets for his next two trips, at least. Before Italy, it was Greece, where he saved on food expenses because the inkeepers at the little place he was staying at found him so helpful and charming they fed him dinners for free. Before Greece, it was Vietnam, and he just had the energy to bounce from odd job to odd job and force ends to meet. Asahi could never do anything approaching that.

  
It helps that he’s stupidly good with languages, especially English. He never did especially well in school, but that’s not what matters. Asahi is a big enough person to admit that he’s jealous. In high school Nishinoya gritted his teeth through English grammar homework. Now, he’s sped up and smoothed out his speech and sanded away his accent. It’s because he never gets embarrassed. An awkward conversation just rolls right off him, and he’s ready to try again. The bastard.

  
“But like I said, after this ham, I just ate tomatoes, anchovies, and pasta for a month straight. My breath got a little weird by the end.”

  
Asahi shudders again as he’s told the gritty ins and outs of fishing life. Nishinoya’s expenses also start to make more sense, because it seems like there wasn’t even anything to spend money on.

  
“They didn’t give you a bed?” Asahi gapes.

  
“It didn’t bother me. Plus you could see the stars really well at night, and the sounds of the ocean were really relaxing, so sometimes I’d choose to just go to sleep on the sand.”

  
“Are you okay?” Asahi demands.

  
“What, you wouldn’t want to sleep in the sand?”

  
“No! Because I am a normal person!”

  
Nishinoya forces Asahi to rub his forearm. “Soft, right? That’s what sand does to you,” Nishinoya insists, but Asahi cannot be swayed. If anything it’s scarier that your “bed” would be rubbing away your top layer of skin while you slept. But Nishinoya goes on to show him some truly stunning pictures of the ocean, translucent and sweetly blue, and Asahi can see why it was worth it. Nishinoya has reached his last slide, a close up shot of a fish’s gasping face. 

  
“Did you like it?” Nishinoya asks.

  
“Yeah!” Asahi replies, surprised by the force of his own earnesty.

  
“Great,” Nishinoya says, then vaults over to his nest of cushions on the floor, and pulls a blanket up to his chin, as simple as that.

  
“You’re going to sleep on the floor?” Asahi asks.

  
Nishinoya has closed his eyes. It does not appear that he’s going to open them again. “A bed’s too soft. I’ve gotten too used to the sand.”

  
“Oh. Ok. As long as you’re comfortable. It’s about the time I head out now to meet Suga and Daichi.”

  
Nishinoya smiles a little, but his eyes do not flick open. “Have fun and tell them I say hi,” he says, his voice already becoming bleary.

  
“Will do,” Asahi tells him.

__

He arrives at the bar after Suga and Daichi, and they don’t let him forget it. His protests that his apartment is farther than their AirBnB fall on deaf ears. He took the subway instead of driving, because they’ll be drinking, and he had like 3 transfers. Suga and Daichi only had 1.

  
“Sounds like you’ve gotten spoiled by having a car,” Suga says without sympathy.

  
The conversation turns to work, because they’re adults now, and that’s what adults do. Asahi soaks up the easy warmth of the conversation. They talk often, but still, he misses them.

  
“Remember that guy? Daichi’s middle school friend? He’s started working in Daichi’s department,” Suga supplies.

  
A flicker of something crosses Daichi’s face. “It’s not a big deal.”

  
“Oh, I remember him. He was really good at talking, right? Like, ‘Win for me’ or something like that. Do you like working with him?”

  
“It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing special.” Daichi takes a long pull of his drink. If he were a braver or nosier person, Asahi might have pressed on, but a conspiratorial glance with Suga will do for now.

  
“Suga, how’s teaching, how are the kids?” Asahi asks.

  
Suga lets out a long sigh, and tips his head back. “I’m aging, Asahi. They’re aging me. Well, not really. They’re really cute and bright most of the time. But some sort of vomiting sickness is going around. Guess how many times I had to clean up vomit in one day.”

  
Asahi tentatively raises two fingers. “Four,” Suga tells him, another sigh leaking out of him.

  
Asahi tells them about his work, too. In college he had been warned about the cutthroat world of fashion, but the company he’s ended up at is a fairly warm place. He misses the avant garde atmosphere in school a little bit, and getting to touch a sewing machine more than once a week. These days he’s churning out designs of button down shirt after button down shirt. Going freelance is a very real possibility for the future, but he has the feeling that he’s pretty much landed on his feet.

  
“So when are you going to start a label?” Suga asks.

  
“Azumane Asahi menswear,” Daichi says. “It has a ring to it.”

  
“Twenty years, if I’m lucky,” Asahi replies. They wince for him. He appreciates it.

  
Their conversation turns to some of their other friends. They saw everyone at the Tanaka wedding a few months ago, but it’s a little ridiculous how much dust their friends can kick up in a few months.

  
“Here’s what I was talking about,” Asahi says, showing them a picture of a Shibuya billboard on his phone. “That’s Kageyama!”

  
“That is Kageyama. That’s so weird.” Daichi takes Asahi’s phone and hunches over it. “That really is Kageyama,” he repeats to himself.

  
“Speaking of underclassmen, Nishinoya’s staying with you for a few days?” Suga asks.

  
“Yeah, he told me he had something to do in Tokyo for a few days, but then he’s back to Miyagi.”

  
“Did he bring you any souvenirs?”

  
“No, but he told me he didn’t even have a bed in Italy. He just slept on the ground. Like where is he going to find nice souvenirs, you know? He’ll join us tomorrow, but I think he’s pretty jet lagged tonight. He just showed me all his vacation pictures and then passed out.

  
“Pictures?” Daichi’s eyes narrow in deep consideration. “Nishinoya takes pictures?”

  
“I’m imagining blurry pictures and bad selfies, like an old person’s camera roll,” Suga says.

  
He tells them that all of Nishinoya's pictures of himself were corny, but his landscape pictures were competent. They bear no mark of artistic inclination, but they’re competent. “Nishinoya doesn’t show you his vacation pictures?” Asahi asks.

  
Daichi shrugs. “He probably knows you’re the only one who’ll sit through them. You’ve let him boss you around since high school.”

  
“You would’ve been useless if he didn’t boss you around in high school,” Suga tacks on, as if this is a helpful thing to say.

  
“Huh. It was pretty intense. He’s done this before, too. He turned out all the lights. It’s strange he only does it to me.”

  
Daichi begins to say something but changes his mind.

  
“Like a business meeting?” Suga asks, amused.

  
“Yeah, a lot like a business meeting actually.”

  
“So he shows you his vacation pictures and turns into a salesman.” Daichi claps Asahi’s shoulder, and it lands with heavy, familiar weight. “Better you than me, my friend.”

  
“Actually now that you say it, yeah, he gets a lot like a salesman.”

  
“He’s probably trying to get you to go travel with him.” Suga says.

  
Asahi considers this. “Nishinoya? Why wouldn’t he come out and say it though? He’s never been afraid to say something in his life.”

  
Suga shrugs. “He can be a thoughtful guy sometimes.”

  
“Yeah, he’s thoughtful, but, like what is he even thinking?” Asahi asks.

  
Daichi looks like he’s amused, but Asahi can sense Scary Daichi lurking below the surface, a distant shark fin in black water. “I mean, sometimes you can definitely figure it out,” Daichi says.  
Then the conversation moves on.

__

Asahi comes back to his dark and quiet apartment. He showers and brushes his teeth with his head swimming pleasantly, still savoring the vestigial traces of warmth from the evening. He’s climbing into bed when a small, cold hand clamps down on his ankle. Simply put, he leaps out of his skin. He realizes that the scream that has split the air is coming from him.

  
Nishinoya is laughing.

  
“Why would you do that?” Asahi sputters. “I thought you were a monster or something.”

  
Nishinoya stops laughing, like a faucet switched off. Asahi can see his blurry outline sit up in the dark. “I thought it’d be funny. I’m sorry if I really scared you.”

  
“It’s fine,” he sighs. And it is fine. His heart, which moments before had threatened to hammer out of his chest, is already slowing down.

  
He can feel the weight of Nishinoya’s eyes settle on him, and after a moment or two, can hear him lying back down. “Okay.”

  
In the quiet that follows, Asahi finds it easy to close his eyes. It’s a little strange. Usually fear doesn’t just slough off him like this. It might be the alcohol.

  
“Asahi,” Nishinoya breaks the silence.

  
“Mm.”

  
“Aren’t you a little old to believe in monsters? You should have said robber or something.”

  
“I’ll throw you out,” Asahi mutters. The last thing he remembers before drifting off to sleep is Nishinoya’s laugh.

__

He wakes up to quiet, but still noticeable rustling in his apartment. Asahi pads into the kitchen and finds Nishinoya rinsing some dishes.

  
“Asahi! You’re up. You don’t have anything in your house, so I went to 7-11. I brought you back some things too.”

  
Asahi explains that the DJ and poet will gobble down anything they see in the kitchen, so he’s gotten used to eating out.

  
“It’s fine,” Nishinoya says, and Asahi watches with quiet awe as he places his clean dish on the dish rack. This is the first time he has witnessed anyone else in the apartment wash a dish and then put it on the dishrack. He’s seeing a thing of great beauty.

  
“I missed Japanese food a lot, even if it’s the 7-11 versions,” Nishinoya continues. “Here.” He nudges a bag at Asahi. “But 7-11’s pretty great. I don’t know what you wanted so i got you a whole bunch of things.

  
Asahi feels his quiet awe grow stronger. This might be the first time he’s seen food in this apartment that he did not pay for.

  
“How early were you up this morning?” Asahi asks.

  
“Oh, like 9 am. I don’t really get that jet lagged. My flight was just really long last night. You’re kind of a late sleeper, Asahi.”

  
Wow. Jetlag. Another thing that slides straight off of Nishinoya but socks that Asahi square in the face. “And by the way, what’s the thing you have to do in Tokyo?

  
“Huh? It was to come and see you.”

  
Warmth spreads in Asahi’s stomach. “Okay.”

  
They spend a quiet morning together, and then a quiet afternoon. Asahi takes him around his neighborhood and shows him the small details of his life in Tokyo. The corner store he buys paper towels at. The tiny, cramped stationary store he buys his sketch materials for work at. A coworker once asked him where he got his eraser, and Asahi was given the glorious opportunity to say, “some small place.” The little park he can sit at when city life grates at his nerves. The bench where he can sit and people watch. They do that then, Nishinoya with his knees to his chest.

  
“Bet that guy’s a superhero on the side,” Nishinoya says of a man dressed in a severe black business suit.

  
“Where does he get the time? It seems like he works weekends. It Sunday now.”

  
“Evenings,” Nishinoya replies.

  
A gaggle of teenagers, looking disaffected and decidedly neon, pass by them, flicking their colorful hair over their shoulders. “Do you want to make clothes like that?” Nishinoya asks, inclining his chin towards them.

  
Asahi looks at the array of cheap polyester. Even at this distance, he can see that there are some loose threads on the seams of one teenager’s baggy pants. “The design’s okay,” he manages.

  
Nishinoya laughs. “So no? What kind of clothes do you want to make?”

  
Asahi watches a pair of crows move through the gray sky. “I don’t know.” He’s been all over the place. He’s wanted to make clothes that “meditate” on some larger issue, he’s wanted to make clothes for the average person, he’s wanted to make ethereal couture.

  
“That doesn’t matter,” Nishinoya says. “You’ll figure it out. You’ve got time. Loads of time. I looked up Miyake Issei the other night and he’s like 80. You’re only twenty-something now. What do you need to rush for? You’ve got 60 years. You haven’t even been alive for 60 years.”

  
Asahi is surprised by how comforting he finds these words. He’s heard diluted variants of them before, but coming from Nishinoya and his unrelenting eye contact, he feels as if they’re landing on their intended mark.

  
“You’re right.” He smiles, and looks over Nishinoya’s plain black t-shirt and athletic shorts. “How do you know about Miyake Issei?”

  
“Obviously from you,” Nishinoya reples, matter of fact. “You said you kinda wanted to be him once.” He springs to his feet, surprising Asahi. In one fluid motion he has gone from hugging his knees to standing. It’s been a while since he’s seen Nishinoya in motion, his supple athleticism. He felt a similar way when he saw Shoyo at the Tanaka wedding, and Shoyo did a casual split jump on the dance floor. Monsters, both of them.

  
“Let’s go, Asahi. My butt’s getting numb from sitting so long.”

__

Before long it’s time to meet Suga and Daichi. They duck inside a bustling restaurant, and see Suga and Daichi cramped together at a table in the back, waiting for them. Suga and Daichi descend upon Nishinoya with bright smiles, clapping him on the back, remarking on his tan, encircling his enlarged biceps with their hands. Nishinoya, golden boy, has that effect on people, doesn’t he.

  
“Tell us about Italy,” Suga says.

  
“Yeah, while we’ve been doing paperwork you’ve been out in the sun,” Daichi adds.

  
Nishinoya tells them the shoe story, about his sand bed (they’re on Asahi’s side on that one), about his fishing contests, hauling giant marlins up from the sea. Daichi and Suga repeat what they told Asahi last night, but he doesn’t mind hearing it again. Nishinoya laughs brightly at Suga’s vomiting story, and straightens with recognition when Daichi’s new colleague comes up.

  
“Yeah! How could I forget him? He was a pretty stand out guy. Ikejiro?” Nishinoya asks.

  
“Ikejiri,” Daichi corrects, with great reluctance.

  
They finish their dinner and go to the bar next door for drinks (they glanced at the drinks menu at the bar and quickly snapped it shut once they saw the prices). Nishinoya is a surprising heavyweight, for all that he is literally half of Asahi’s side. They all, Nishinoya included, can’t believe it. How is Nishinoya’s face not flushed at all? Is the tan hiding it? Nishinoya’s not usually like this. They all remembered him at the Tanaka wedding. Ryu was crying through his vows, but Nishinoya was trying to muffle great, chest heaving sobs. It was a little distracting, but it was mostly cute. Asahi has always been a little awed by Ryu and Nishinoya’s bond. Then Nishinoya had calmed down and his mood rocketed towards the other direction. He and Shoyo did Kpop dances for a full half hour. And he had had what, one, two little cups of sake? Asahi presses his palms to Nishinoya’s cheeks: how is it possible that his face isn’t hot at all? Then it clicks: “They gave me wine everyday in Italy,” Nishinoya says.

  
Daichi snorts. “Wine everyday but no bed? What even is that. Like what is it.”

  
Asahi, sleepy, not usually one to drink two nights in a row, finds himself agreeing to drive all three of them to the train station tomorrow night. There’s a brief moment of excitement that they might all be on the same train, as they’re all headed for Miyagi, but Nishinoya’s leaving out of a station on the west side and Suga and Daichi are leaving out of a station on the north side. Nishinoya notices that Asahi is drooping and takes pity on him, suggesting they all go home soon.

  
“Hey, hey, wake up,” Nishinoya says, clasping Asahi’s elbow and giving him a shake. Behind them he can hear Suga and Daichi laughing, lighthearted, comfortable.

  
“It’s like shepherding,” Suga says.

  
“Like those videos of a small dog chasing around a big cow,” Daichi responds.

  
“That’s kind of your whole relationship, isn’t it?” Suga asks warmly.

  
Asahi expects Nishinoya to laugh, but he doesn’t. “Yeah, it is,” Nishinoya says. There hadn’t been even a trace of meanness in Suga’s voice. It’s odd. Nishinoya usually cackles at Suga’s observational quips. But his smile doesn’t budge, his eyes don’t flick elsewhere, his face just sets in place. It’s only noticeable because usually every line in his face moves when he talks, like an old cartoon. But Nishinoya turns away, attention caught by something else, no doubt lively again.

  
“Did you have a good time in Tokyo?” Nishinoya shouts back at Suga and Daichi, who have arrived at their subway stop. They give him unsteady thumbs ups. “See you tomorrow!” he says with a vigorous wave.

  
The walk from Suga and Daichi’s subway stop to their own is a short one. Asahi’s feeling a little more awake now. The crisp evening air feels nice on his face. Nishinoya’s babbling about how good it is to see Suga and Daichi again.

  
“It was a great night,” Asahi agrees. After that, they lapse into comfortable silence.

  
Nishinoya turns to look at him. “Do you want to go to Paris with me?”

  
Asahi rubs the last traces of fatigue out of his eyes. He’s almost entirely fine now. Still, the suddenness of Nishinoya’s question catches him off guard. “Go to Paris? With you?”

  
“Not anytime soon, we’d obviously have to plan it out and save up and everything. But a travel company offered me this really cheap package in exchange for some social media posts. It’d be fun if you went with me.”

  
“You really want to go with me?”

  
“How’s that even a question? Of course.”

  
“What if I get in the way of all the fun you could have. I don’t think I could sleep on sand. Nishinoya, I’m just not as cool as you.”

  
Nishinoya comes to a halt. “What? I can’t believe you said that. Are you stupid? Hey, stop walking.”

  
Asahi stops walking.

  
“Listen to me. The fun comes from you. Not the other way around. You don’t have to make the fun. Your presence is enough to make stuff fun. Do you understand?”

  
These words wash over him before they sink in, like ocean water over sand. He looks down at Nishinoya. “Yeah, I understand.”

  
“So do you want to go to Paris with me?”

  
“Yeah. I’d love to.”

  
“Great. I’ll send you the preliminary information now, and you can look it over in the morning.”

__

Morning comes, and Asahi looks over the email Nishinoya sent him. He thinks, with growing certainty, that this could all work out. The trip would be scheduled for a time when work is on the slower side, and if he banks his vacation days and sick days he can easily cover the time frame. The prices are unbelievable. Genuinely unbelievable. He hopes that this company isn’t covertly plotting to harvest their organs. But maybe losing a kidney or liver would be worth it for flight prices this low. He’ll still have to cut back a little, maybe stop eating out so much, but he wouldn’t have to do anything drastic.

  
He tells this to Nishinoya over a 7-11 breakfast. The smile Nishinoya gives him back takes up his whole face.

  
“I’m so glad this looks like it’ll work out. I’ve been wanting to travel with you for a really long time.” He gives a little bark of laughter. “I was kinda nervous when I asked you, even though I knew you’d say yes.”

  
Asahi thinks of the mountain of vacation paperwork he needs to drill down through at work, of the scrimping and saving he has ahead of him. He’s not even sure he would have said yes. What makes Nishinoya so sure? “You were sure I’d say yes? Why?”

  
“You’d say yes to anyone.”

  
“What do you mean?”

  
“You’d say yes to anyone,” Nishinoya repeats. “And it’s not because you’re spineless. Well you kind of are, but that’s not the main reason. You give a lot. You give people the space they want in your life.”

  
This swung from something that sounded negative to something that could sound positive, so Asahi is still parsing it out. Perhaps Nishinoya is uncharacteristically afraid of offending him, because he breaks his eye contact and looks down at his meal.

  
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Eat your breakfast.”

__

It quickly becomes time to pick up Suga and Daichi and send them to the train station. Nishinoya at first tries to help Asahi navigate to their AirBnB, but Nishinoya plays it too fast and loose with turns. Asahi snatches his phone back and places it in the cupholder.

  
Suga and Daichi are waiting for them on the curb when they pull in. Their suitcases, packed for two days, are bigger than Nishinoya’s, packed for two months. It’s definitely more a testament of Nishinoya’s personality than it is of Suga or Daichi’s materiality.

  
Nishinoya goes and helps them load their suitcases in the trunk. After they settle into the backseat, their attention turns to teasing Nishinoya for taking the passenger seat.

  
“What,” Nishinoya returns, “Then I’d have to choose one of you to give the passenger seat to. Isn’t choosing my favorite upperclassmen ruder?”

  
“Or we could just decide for ourselves,” Suga says gravely, foiling Nishinoya on the spot.

  
Perhaps he shouldn’t have, because Nishinoya decides to climb over into the backseats and wedge himself between them. They make a great fuss, but make no real effort to dislodge him. Asahi wouldn’t have either. He suspects that adult life, or at least these shaky first steps into adult life, has been a little too quiet and neat for the three of them. Not too sad or bland. And in no way concretely bad. Just a little too neat and quiet. If he had a chance to elbow at his friends like they’re high schoolers again, he would take it. Asahi glances in his rearview mirror at them. Daichi has Nishinoya in a headlock and a full toothed smile on his face. Asahi feels a heaviness in his chest that’s a little disproportionate to the situation. They’re just going back to Miyagi, and Asahi will see them again during the holidays, latest. He now even has this trip with Nishinoya to look forward to. And they were just here for a weekend. Still, though.

  
Soon they’ve arrived at Suga and Daichi’s train station. Nishinoya makes them promise to hang out with him while he’s in Miyagi, and Asahi makes them promise to come back to Tokyo soon. Nishinoya climbs back up to the passenger seat. Because they have a little bit of time before Nishinoya’s train, they sit there and watch Suga and Daichi’s backs become smaller and smaller, until they’re engulfed by the crowd.

  
And then it’s just him and Nishinoya in the car again. Asahi’s has been turning over Nishinoya’s words in the back of his head. They’ve been lingering in his thoughts the way hard candy lingers in the molars.

  
“Yu,” he says. This gets his attention, because Asahi hardly ever calls him by his first name. Asahi glances over, a little unsettled by the intensity of the gaze that Nishinoya trains on him. He gathers his courage and continues. “I don’t think I would have said yes to anybody. To go on a two week long trip to Paris.”

  
“What?”

  
“What we were talking about earlier. I don’t think I would have agreed to spend two weeks in Paris with just anybody. I like you a lot.” All of it: picking Nishinoya up from the airport, sending him to the train station, watching him sleep curled on the floor, listening to his vacation PowerPoint, picking up his calls during work hours. The space he has for Nishinoya in his life has been carefully excavated and carefully maintained, not freely given.

  
“Okay. I see.” Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Nishinoya pick up his phone, type something in it, put it down, and then start bouncing his left leg. He takes in a breath, deeper and longer than normal. He leans his head against the window and then picks it up again. Then all the movement stops, and he does the thing he’s been doing recently, where he becomes still.

  
“Hey, Asahi,” he says, a little too brightly. “Do you know I love you?” When he says this, his voice slants down, stern, like an irritated school teacher.

  
Asahi laughs. He’s never been told that he’s loved in so harsh a tone. “Thank you.”

  
Nishinoya turns his body towards Asahi. Full eye contact or nothing. “I love you romantically. I’ve loved you since two months after I met you.”

  
Asahi turns his eyes back to the road. For all that Nishinoya spits this at him, the words settle on him softly. He’d had a notion, formless, a little abstract, and now it has finally been given an outline. Yeah. Nishinoya sends him pictures of sunsets and blurry snapshots of the moon. He says alongside them: look at this! I think you’d like this! You’d enjoy being here. And even back in high school. The lengths Nishinoya went to to bring him back to volleyball. Two months doesn’t surprise him. This knowledge is not a car that has come lurching at him out of the blue, catching him in its headlights, it is a slow moving thing on some Miyagi backroad, ambling towards him. Only now it has come close enough for him to see its shape.

  
“Thank you,” Asahi says again, and means it.

  
Nishinoya taps out a steady 150 beats per minute on the floor with his foot. “I just checked, we can back out of the Paris thing at any time.”

  
“What? No. I love you in a romantic way too.”

  
Nishinoya places his hand on top of Asahi’s. His fingers end at Asahi’s first knuckle. “Do you know what romantic means?” he asks, voice a little small. Or maybe his voice is just at an indoor volume, which is a little small for him.

  
“Yes. I’m aware of what romance means.”

  
Nishinoya curls his fingers over Asahi’s. “Good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Nishonoya's lifestyle is only sustainable as an influencer, don't you think?


End file.
